Weathering the Storm

I should have been a weatherman. Weatherperson? Maybe that's what you're supposed to say but I'm a guy as well as a person soooo... I'm sticking with weatherman. When describing myself anyway. I'll do my best to be politically correct elsewhere.

Anyhoo, I bet you I could do that job with no training whatsoever and there wouldn't be a noticeable difference between my forecasts and anyone else's. Now don't get me wrong; there's lots of stuff weatherpeople do. Nimbuses and clouds and pressure and prevailing winds and stuff. Plus the radar and thingys. Heck, they even have something in Seattle called "double doppler radar" that they're very proud of, despite the fact that it sounds porn-related.

The thing is, weathermammals do a crap-ton of work to get 5% more accuracy than looking at a calendar and glancing out the window before saying "Hmm... looks like rain. Bet tomorrow will be rainy too." Oh sure, there's long-term forecasts but those would be easy enough to deal with. I'd just always predict moderate to poor weather for the weekend. That way anyone who got upset when they saw the forecast would be pleasantly surprised, instead of angry that the weather didn't go the way they wanted it to. Simple. As for other days? Well c'mon, how hard is this to predict:

Cloudy with a 60% chance of showers? Way to go out on a limb there guys. "Meh... it'll either rain or it won't." Not exactly something you can plan a golf trip around. And for crying out loud, is there an easier place in the world to predict the weather in than Vancouver? Africa during monsoon season? Summer in the Sahara? Winter in Antarctica? "Here's your forecast for McMurdo Station: Go outside for ten minutes and your balls will fall off. In other news..."

Anyway, I think I could pull it off without anyone noticing.


COMPLETE TANGENT:
I wish companies hadn't gotten all bacon-ey and started jamming it into everything under the sun. Bacon was better when it was the stealth awesome ingredient. Now it's a little less awesome.

Bacon is the indie band of food groups.

Spacing Out

I've been on a real space kick recently. For instance, I can see Venus outside my office window right now*. Venus. A planet. With my eyes! Isn't that awesome? It's another freaking planet just floating around out there, chilling with its friends. "Oh look... it's the moon, a whole other planet, and a gigantic perpetual nuclear explosion that hovers in the air. Just another day in my backyard."

Speaking of the moon, how is it that my generation looks at the moon and thinks to itself "Oh yeah, totally doable." Really? Take a look up someday, does that thing look easy to get to? And have you seen the crap they went to the moon with? If I'd lent them my phone back then it would have revolutionized the entire mission. Hell, I probably could have written an excel spreadsheet that would automatically handle all the computer functions for the trip.

Just for fun, here's an example of how ridiculous the moon landing was. This is a quote from the Neil Armstrong biography where he's talking about descending onto the moon:

On the double-paned window on Neil’s side of the LM (Paul: Lunar Module. And good to know it was double-paned, keeps out the draft) there was a vertical line with horizontal marks on it. As the LM flew facedown, Neil used a stopwatch to time the number of seconds it took to move from mark A to mark B (Paul: aka, rocks on the ground) on the window line. By that he calculated the spacecraft’s angular rate. With him in the cabin Neil had a chart that he used to compare tracking rates with expected values at various positions along the orbit. Differences between his visual observations and the expected values allowed him to estimate both the altitude of the LM’s perilune and the time at which they would reach it.

Hansen, James R. (2005-10-18). First Man (p. 453). Simon & Schuster, Inc.. Kindle Edition.

Did you hear that? The moon landing depended on proper use of a stopwatch!!! Yeah, I knew their gear was budget but c'mon. I have a ton of respect for these folks. It ain't easy sending someone to the moon with tin cans, a stopwatch, and about 45,000 cigarettes (seriously, read one of these biographies. Those dudes smoked a lot).

As a side note, Erika and I have an ongoing argument about going to Mars. As in, I'd totally go if given the chance. Erika has some flimsy argument about "If you left me for five years to go to Mars I would either leave you while you were gone or kill you when you got back" but I don't get it. My argument is this: It's Mars. Who doesn't want to go to Mars???

The real irony is that Erika is a scientist and would be waaay more likely to get picked for the mission. Me? I'm only going if they decide they want an entertainment director for the flight.


COMPLETE TANGENT:

When did I become a morning person? I remember when I was younger I'd sleep in until 11am and still feel tired. Then for a while I had to get up early for work. Now I'm up at 6:30am writing this despite not needing to be at work for 3 more hours because I'd be too tired to do it after work.

By the way, why do night people get all the coffee cred? "Ooo, look at me. I'm soooo tired, I just can't FUNCTION until I get my morning cup of coffee." Hey, great for you, you need that one cup of joe in the morning to get you going and then it's off to the races. Do you know what afternoons are like for a morning person? If coffee were secreted by small woodland creatures I'd have a cage of them under my desk that I'd wring out directly into my mouth at 2pm. Those critters would start shaking in the corner as soon as they smelled ham sandwich being eaten.


*Actually, after a while it started moving so I'm pretty sure it was a plane. But you can totally see Venus with the naked eye in the morning so everything I said above remains applicable.

Travel Advisory

And we're back folks!

As I mentioned, Complete Tangent was going on hiatus while I went on a job hunt, and that was literally my 9-5 job for the last 6 weeks. But now, thanks to the good people at Skybox Labs and their discerning taste in designers, the blog is up and running again.

Last we heard Erika and I were in Australia. But how does one get from Australia to Vancouver? By plane of course! And do you know what the best part of flying is? The emergency exit cards!

Yes, I am referring to those little cards they stick in the seat-back in front of you that explain how you're going to survive when your 500 tonnes of plane becomes 500 tonnes of boat. These things are a great source of comedy gold. For example:

What is wrong with this woman's child! Is it a child? Is he the white Gary Coleman? Why did she dress him in beige pants, brown socks, and tan shoes?

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"If you do need to open the emergency exit doors, make sure you do it like the steely-eyed motherf**er that you are."

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"Don't forget to molest women on their way out of the plane. If you happen to see a man who isn't taking advantage of this opportunity, ensure that he is aware the opportunity exists."

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"Well if I can't listen to my AM/FM radio or play with my RC cars what the hell am I supposed to do for the next 15 hours!?"

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Apparently the proper procedure if you are traveling with an infant is to form yourself into the shape of a canon and point the baby's head in the direction the plane is traveling.

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Oh no, hideous child is back! And he's an infant? Wow, that was unexpected. Let's break down the steps to making sure your hideous child can grow up and one day make hideous babies of their own:

STEPS 1-2:

Wait patiently until the flight attendant brings you a life vest for your child. Despite the burning and the screaming your child should be quite quiet and patient during this process, assuming you held them in canon formation during landing.

STEPS 3-4:

Carefully jam your child's oversized head through the hole made for someone not shaped like a Lord of the Rings extra. Try not to think of childbirth. Instruct your hideous mistake to step carefully through the leg straps.

STEPS 6-7:

Carefully cinch your man-child into his floatation device. Please note that you should not have attempted to put yours on yet, as that would make you a horrible person.

STEPS 8-9:

Pull on the inflation cords, even though we all know your unruly child would have activated them on their own 5 steps ago. Pretend that you don't see it inflating and blow into the inflation tubes anyway, getting angry when little Damien doesn't go purple from lack of oxygen. Trigger the light on his vest and push him out to sea.

COMPLETE TANGENT:
While writing the blog in Australia, a few things caught my eye that didn't quite have a home in a regular blog post. Such as:

Uuuh... are you sure this is a good idea?

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Is Motorola making condoms now?

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Hey, mixed nuts! Wait, what' that in the top left corner?

Oh. Uh, how very... Australian of you.

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"I believe in anarchy so strongly that I'm willing to put up posters and organize people!"

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Good ol' high viz rope. Man that stuff can do anything. See, you can even climb mountains with it!

Oh. Well you could have been clearer in your messaging.

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"Welcome to Australia, where everyone gets out of the water until the helicopter following the shark tells us it's ok to go back in!"

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Oh hey, it's our good friends at Apple! Sure, let's buy an iPad. Dum de dum... it's checkout time! Wait, what's that option at the bottom?

Please tell me that's not what I think it is. Dare I click on it?

Oh wow, that is what I think it is. Just in case you're wallowing in debt but still want the latest toys, Apple lets you split your purchase up over two credit cards. Stay classy Apple, stay classy.

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Finally, just in case you ever wondered where these ideas come from, here's the whiteboard from Sydney... a scary insight into how my mind works:

Pontificating on the Probable Return to a Proper Posting Period

Hey folks!

Sorry about not posting anything lately. Since getting back to Vancouver pretty much all of my time has been taken up with that time-honoured tradition called "looking for work", so I've been a bit distracted. Which isn't to say that there hasn't been some fantastic blog-fodder... oh Lordy no. For instance, the time when I spent an hour on the phone explaining to a company that yes, improper use of a colon instead of a semicolon CAN completely change the meaning of a return policy (hey, they were $150 dollar pillows ok?). 

Complete Tangent will be back in full force soon enough. Until then, wish me luck in the job hunt!

-Paul

Almost There!

Hey folks! No blog this week as we're pretty busy out here. If you're wondering why, I've supplied a fun word jumble to see if you can work out what's going on. Have fun!

COMPLETE TANGENT:
Ever looked at a big pile of liquor that you thought for sure you'd have time to drink, but you really don't, only it was so expensive that you don't really want to get rid of it, so you simply say "Honey, we can make this happen. Trust me."?

Normally this is where someone jokingly says "Um... me neither" but that's not true. That totally happened.

Signing Your Life Away

You know how when you think of Australia the first thing you think of is deadly animals? Crocs, snakes, spiders, jellyfish... hell, even the large flightless birds have a gigantic claw on their foot that could disembowel a liger.

Well, rest assured that the tourism bureau of Australia is aware of that reputation and desperately hoping to change it. At some point it must have occurred to them that people don't want to go places where they might die and now they're on a mission to downplay the risks associated with the local fauna. For example:

Why don't we look at that again:

What? Crocodile attacks may cause injury? What the hell else would they cause, a hickey? In case you've been living under a rock, this is what a saltwater croc looks like:

You know what actually might happen if you ignore the sign and get attacked while swimming in croc-infested waters? You might get to think "I've made a terrible mistake" in the half-second before you're dragged under. By the way, they're all over the place in Northern Australia and Queensland and one of those places is named Darwin. I don't think that's an accident.

By the way, any of you wondering how effective that sign was?

I kid you not, this photo was taken directly on the other side of that sign. Wow. What's going through these people's heads besides sharp teeth? Maybe they don't understand English? From what I've heard it's always German tourists who get eaten and – putting aside the fact that practically every German speaks English – the Australian government has taken rigorous steps to prevent more German chompings:

Look, I'm all for preventing croc attacks on German tourists, but doesn't this sign need to be WAY more forceful? Come on guys, you need something that screams WENN SIE HIER SCHWIMMEN EIN KROKODIL ESSEN SIE! Something like this:

See, I think that gets the point across with authority! Well, if you're German anyway.

At this point I should mention it's not just the risks of crocodiles that are getting downplayed. Check out this gem (which was an actual sign at the beach):

Ok, I get it. Jellyfish, oh no! But what does that really mean?

That's a lot of text and I want to go swimming. Just tell me if they're dangerous or not.

Oh. Well that does sound bad. I don't like excruciating pain, and death is super inconvenient. Surely there are steps I can take if I should happen to be stung?

Uh, "Treatment involves liberal drenching with vinegar and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation." What? You can't give someone medical care advice that leaps directly from "vigorously rub fish and chips into the wound" all the way to "get yourself hooked up to an artificial lung ASAP!" Shouldn't there be some intermediate steps along the way? Maybe slap them around a little, give 'em a shot of whiskey? That kind of thing. I mean... sweet merciful crap. Shouldn't you be a bit more forceful than "Avoid a painful encounter" when you've got news like this to share?

That said, the dangerous animals of Australia are a national treasure. If you get killed by a crocodile or a box jellyfish there's a pretty good chance it was your fault. And while Cassowaries are dangerous, it's usually the ones who've been fed by humans that end up attacking people. So maybe it wasn't your fault, but it was a person who screwed the animal up all the same.

In fact, people are a bigger threat to Cassowaries than they are to us. The bird is critically endangered and they lose dozens to roadkill incidents every year. That's why you see signs like this around:

Actually that's, um... that's kind of a crappy sign. The top part is fine, but the one on the bottom is a bit budget, isn't it? It looks like Homer Simpson passed out after a costume party. Come to think of it, it reminds me of something else too...

What could it possible be...

Oh come on guys. Really? You have this crazily endangered awesome bird and you try to save a few bucks by repainting speedbump signs to portray a dead Cassowary? Are you joking?

You know what? That's it, I give up. Why are you even bothering? Forget the caution signs, forget the treatment options, forget the warnings about what tourists should or should not do and where they should or should not do it. You've got dangerous crap all over the place, I suggest you hang this in the airport and call it a day:

COMPLETE TANGENT:
I was ranting up a nice stream of righteous indignation about Australians chopping down their rainforest to put up fields of sugarcane and cattle farms when I realized I was eating a cheeseburger and drinking a coke at the time. So I may have been premature in my critique.

Cassowaries are Awesome

No blog post this week, we're on vacation up in Queensland visiting friends, hitting the Great Barrier Reef, and hopefully... more crocodiles! However we did see something awesome already that I thought I'd share because, well, it's just so awesome:

Some facts about Cassowaries:

• They have three dagger-sharp toes that can totally mess you up
• Critically endangered
• There's only 1500-2500 left
• The area we were in is the largest density in Queensland... where there's 40
• Male cassowaries take the female's last name, or something like that. One way or another the female takes off while the dude raises the kids
• The cassowary is the only animal capable of dispersing the seeds of more than 70 different species of tree

Also:

• Sugarcane and cattle are way, way more important than cassowaries are

For your viewing pleasure, I have a video to share as well.

CAUTION: SOME ADULT LANGUAGE (I'm not saying who it was)