An advertisement in our local brake repair center offered this helpful bit of car repair wisdom today:
The Purpose of Brakes
Other facts they might feature on future posters: “Engines help you go!” and “Steering wheels help you turn.”
Sophie got a box of valentine cards to hand out to her friends — princess themed, of course.
Princess Valentines
The cards came in a box with two curious warning messages inside. First:
Caution: changes or modifications not expressly approved by the party responsible for compliance could void the user’s authority to operate the equipment.
And second:
NOTE: This equipment has been tested and found to comply with the limits for a Class B digital device, pursuant to Part 15 of the FCC Rules. These limits are designed to provide reasonable protection against harmful interference in a residential installation.
Are paper Valentine’s Day cards for children now more sophisticated than they were when I was a kid? They look exactly the same to me.
My girlfriend recently got this message in her voice mail:
This is Darren from Grand Canyon University admissions. I just saw your application and wanted to know if you have any questions.
What a nice gesture! It’s a friendly, no-pressure call to applicants, humanizing the institution and making the admissions office more accessible.
I have just one tiny suggestion.
See, Grand Canyon University has already made an appearance on this site once before, when in February of last year it published the Best PDF Ever. At that time, I was researching the university’s commencement schedule so that my girlfriend and I could fly to Phoenix and I could see her graduate.
And that’s exactly what we ultimately did. We flew to Phoenix. We stayed at a hotel downtown. We ate at neighborhood restaurants. We even ended up walking seven kilometers in the desert heat on account of a poorly drawn map. And on Saturday, May 2nd, I sat in a stadium and cheered while she walked across the commencement stage and got her Master’s degree.
So my suggestion to the admissions office is this: try to solicit questions from applicants sometime before they’ve graduated.
Apparently the citizens of Longmont, Colorado have been having some trouble crossing streets. This massive sign sits beside a crosswalk on Main Street:
Crosswalk Instructions
“To cross street wait for break in traffic; then cross to middle island. From middle island, wait for traffic in other direction; then finish crossing. Note: Do not walk out in front of oncoming traffic.”
I love a city that needs formal signs warning its residents not to step in front of moving cars.
Walking with my girlfriend in Longmont, CO I noticed this sign at the top of a door:
Complete Business Services?
They offer everything! Unless, of course, your business uses five or more S’s.
Dear Bank,
Back in May your fraud prevention department contacted me to report what ultimately turned out to be a routine Peapod purchase for a little over $100.
It was humorous.
When you called me again today to report another possibly fraudulent transaction on my card I was less amused. I assumed the lunch order I placed today for over $100 (covering my colleagues, who paid me back in cash) was the offending transaction.
Imagine my surprise when you confirmed what had really gotten your computer’s attention: a single online purchase from Peapod for a little over $100.
Peapod.
You know… Peapod.
Peapod!
Haven’t we been down this road before? I know I recognize that tree.
In the future, please assume that all charges from Peapod are legitimate until I notify you otherwise. I promise to alert you before paying someone else’s grocery bill.
Sincerely,
Someone who just wanted to buy food
Found in an old bit of code a former student in my department wrote:
<form action=”…” method=”post” onsubmit=”myfun();myfun2();myfun3();return submitSully;”>
If it just called myfun(), myfun2(), and myfun3(), and then returned Sully, that would be mundane. But it calls myfun(), myfun2(), and myfun3(), and returns submitSully, and that’s just priceless.
I don’t habitually monitor the organizational chart for my department, but after some important changes recently I downloaded the latest version. This is what it looks like:
Organizational Chart
It’s important to understand here that I didn’t just delete names from this diagram; that’s really how it looks. Evidently we have some vacancies to fill.
(I’ll take some comfort from being able to deduce exactly where my name should go from the outline alone.)
I’ve been searching for a good restaurant to either eat Thanksgiving dinner or pickup Thanksgiving dinner to take home. There are dozens of appealing restaurants in Boston — from simple, microwaveable deli plates to $100 per person gourmet spreads. One of the first restaurants to appear in my search was The Oak Room. I went to their website to get menu details and found this (apparently unrelated) special:
Mayor's Holiday Special
“The Mayor’s Holiday Special is not available on holidays.” To quote (unavoidably) The Princess Bride:
You keep using that word. I don’t think it means what you think it means.
I got my first check for service as a juror today. I love that where one would normally find the account holder’s name, it just says “United States Treasury.” Evidently the government goes straight to the source when writing checks. (This somehow reminds me of that classic line from The Princess Bride: “You are the Brute Squad!”)
Being the responsible and obsessive adult that I am, I immediately wanted to know the tax implications. Google immediately produced an article titled “Jury Duty Pay Given to Employer” on the IRS website. Many employers ask staff to hand over their jury duty pay in exchange for earning their regular salary while they’re serving as a juror. The article clarifies that this can be deducted on line 34 of the 1040 form, as seen in this graphic from the article:
How the IRS Thinks the 1040 Form Looks
Note in the lower right corner that this is the form for 2008. I happen to have submitted a 1040 form that year, which, of course, I saved. After cropping it and blanking out the amounts (but making no other changes), my copy looks like this:
How the 1040 Form Really Looks
Either “tuition and fees” and “jury duty pay” are terms we’re now using interchangeably, or we should probably be a little nervous that the IRS doesn’t know what its own forms look like.