Tootsie Pop-ularity 2011

OKAY, if there's one thing that gets me bloggin', it's WORKPLACE HALLOWEEN EVENTS. And I'm talking about LAST year's Halloween, because I haven't reported on it yet, and it's already October 26. I simply can't keep two Halloweens in my memory.

So I went ahead and bought all of the Tootsie Pops and made a Pops Pile.

And again, I set out a sample of equal numbers of each flavor out where kids could reach them, and I encouraged the costumed children of my coworkers to take one of the color of their choice when they came a-trickin' and a-treatin'. I recorded each preference and replaced the appropriate lolly.

Go ahead and look up my last Tootsie Pop-ularity post, which, embarrassingly, is only a few posts ago. The winner of Halloween 2010 was the new blue raspberry flavor, which was predictably absent in 2011. In its place was a green apple flavor, which, as you can see, was the runaway winner.



















So I'm not going to go too deep into how I made an awesome spreadsheet that allowed me to quickly and effortlessly track the progress of each Tootsie Pop. I'm just going to say that it was awesome. As is self-evident, the greens ran out first, so I started a new graph for the remaining colors, post-green.




















It's interesting to me that the grape and chocolate flavors did so well. The grape flavored ones (whose wrappers are plainly blue) didn't do well at all in 2010, although that was an awfully small sample size. Also of interest is how badly the raspberry/dark red Tootsie Pops did once there wasn't any green on the table. So if you are trying to sell a dark-red product, try placing it near a green product and watch your sales numbers rise.

I notice the orange bar doesn't look very orange. I wanted a pretty good contrast among the two reds and the orange. And it sure looked orange when I picked it. Hmm. Stay tuned for this year's results, which will be in soon. How will brown do? HOW WILL BROWN DO??

Three letter combos

Here are some combinations of three letters. Try to think of a word that uses those letters in order.

Examples!
itm
mpa

And you could think of words like bitmap and compass.

So here you go!

adt
edt
ilu
hyt
rsi

I'll post answers whenever. Here is a picture of some turkeys wandering around near city hall in Clayton, CA.
















Click to embiggen. You can't really see them that well.

Tootsie Pop-ularity

Last Halloween I went to my grown-up job, only to discover that the grown-ups that I work with are all more grown-up than me. In the afternoon, they brought in their spouses and shorter versions of themselves, dressed up in elaborate costumery. The shorties then proceeded to trick-or-treat at all of the cubicles, and since I am a grown-up with my own cubicle, they ALSO CAME TO MY CUBICLE. I looked to my left to see that I had anticipated this event, and I opened some bags of Tootsie Pops.

















I put some handfuls of Tootsie Pops on the corner of my desk.

















Kids came by and said "trick or treat." I motioned toward the pile o' Pops and said something like "What's your favorite kind?" And in most cases, the kids would look over the pile and then select a Tootsie Pop for their bag.

What they didn't know:
1. I was trying to maintain an almost-equal-if-not-equal mix of all of the colors in a friendly, unbiased pile. The photos are not a good example of this.
2. I recorded what flavor they chose after they walked away and replaced the appropriate Tootsie Pops into the pile.

What I didn't know:
1. Blue raspberry was to be the landslide victor!
















I didn't know blue raspberry was even a flavor. It's apparently new. (or at least it was last Halloween.) It whupped all of the other Tootsie Pops' little lollibottoms. I ended up running clean out of blue raspberry ones, but I kept giving out the leftovers for hours.

1st place: Blue raspberry
2nd place: Orange
3rd place: Chocolate
4th place: Raspberry
5th place: Cherry
6th place: Grape

So blue raspberry is the most popular Tootsie Pop. Even more than regular raspberry. Raspberries aren't blue.

A lot of the kids gave me sincere thank-yous. One even tapped me on the knee and waited until he had my attention before looking me in the eyes and thanking me.

Two-syllable words

Sometimes Alan cannot maintain steady blogging habits. Okay, Alan never maintains steady blogging habits. Alan admits knowing about Alan's hist'ry without normal bloggy postings. Forthwith, Alan attempts anew, posting pictures, pizza flavor kneecap keyboard, chipper SpongeBob SquarePants table bucket marble dolphins. Bagel pillow. Ancient sandal jelly.

Job

Dear blogosphere,

I got a job. Months ago. Sorry for not blogging about it. But here is some neat evidence that I really did get a job!

Here's my name plaque, along with those of some of my workmates:
















And here's my desk with the computer they gave me!
















It doesn't have a hard drive, but that's NEVER STOPPED ME from being productive. I've almost completely automated the jobs of everyone around me. Pay. Raise.

I'm just a software tester, but that doesn't mean I don't occasionally do things like walk to the break room to grab some water, discuss things over lunch, and chuckle at Dilbert comic strips. I tell ya, I'm the f'real deal. I can be sick and still get paid. I can stress about 401k's. I can attend telephone conferences. Do you think I was doing any of that stuff when I was a student? No. You don't.

I'll keep you all posted about the status of my climb up the corporate ladder through regular and frequent blogging. Hahahahahaa, just kidding.

Really though. I'll try to blog more. Hahhahahahhahhh.

movie theaters

So there's hubbub about illegally downloading music and movies. Let me take this moment to assure you that I have NOT been participating in such activities. Just in case Axe Cop is reading my blague. Amazon music downlaods and Netflix streaming are fully able to meet my music and movie needs.

Keep reading. This isn't a preachy post. It's a rant.

Amazon and iTunes and other paid download services have done wonders in terms of getting people to pay for music. Why are people still stealing movies? Oh, I don't know, maybe it's because you'd otherwise have to GO TO A THEATER TO WATCH THEM? What if the only way to listen to new songs was to go to a public music house where you had to pay per listen? PER LISTEN?

Oh hey, my favorite band has a new single out. I'm off to the mall with my fistful of dollars so I can go hear it ONCE. What the hey, it was payday yesterday, I might even listen to it TWICE. What times will they be playing it?I can't wait until it comes out on CD and/or Amazon MP3. Oh man, I hope I get a good seat to listen to the song, usually I'm too far away from the speakers and the floor is sticky and the people are noisy and the popcorn costs one million dollars.

Why do we still put up with theaters?

Here's me eating a green bell pepper like an apple:

Axe Cop

So I'm a secret fan of some web comics, but don't tell anyone. Except please feel free to tell as many people as you possibly can about Axe Cop. It's written by a 5-year-old and drawn up by his 29-year-old brother. It's astoundingly entertaining. It's at Axe Cop dot com.

I lost it when I read Ask Axe Cop number 11. I had tears in my eyes. I couldn't breathe for about five minutes. I'm going to go look at it again.

How I became cool

I didn't seek to be cool. Coolness came to me.

In bullet point form!

- Once upon a time, people used Palm Pilots!
- Nerds like me rejoiced.
- The things you could DO with those things!
- But they were not cool.
- Oh no.
- Functionality was not a measure of coolness.
- Did I stop using mine?
- No way.
- But I started to keep it a secret, at least.
- After many years.

What happened next?

- Steve happened.
- Steve invented the iPod and iPhone.
- And everyone started geekin out about em.
- Functionality is cool now?
- I see people all over the place using them and thinking they're cool.
- Now I can use an iPod touch to do all the stuff I used to do with a Palm Pilot!
- And that's perfectly acceptable!

Did I rise to a new tier of coolness? Or has coolness plummeted to geekiness? Millions of people have become severe nerds and they think it's cool. How did that happen? Nerds.

Just look at the number of hits!
palm pilots are cool
ipod touches are cool

Things that are timely

This world that we live in is outrageously full of timely things. What's timely, you ask? Well, dictionary dot com!

Timely: occurring at a suitable time; seasonable; opportune; well-timed: a timely warning.

No, no, you say, what is an example of a timely thing? Well, I Googled some key phrases to find out what some of the world's most timely things are.

Take a second to think about what YOU think are the world's most timely things.

"that's a very timely"
- question
- inclusion
- article
- scripture reference
- comment

"extremely timely"
- Michael Jackson post
- Parker Griffith commentary
- tracking
- IT governance

"outrageously timely"
- the adoption process

Whoops! Looks like someone put "timely" next to "costly" and assumed that "-ly" means "well it sure takes up a lot of fill in the blank." Ho ho! What an interesting discovery while finding out the world's most timely things.

Oh man. Sorry guys. I'm just breaking the blogging slump. But hey! I moved the compliment and insult generators to the sidebar and I've added lots of words! version 1.1 each!

Random Compliment Generator 1.0

Please click on this link. I'd appreciate it. Maybe do it a few times.

Click!


Still working on the interface.

Random Insult Generator 1.0

Don't click on this link. Especially don't click it more than once. You'll be sorry.

Don't click!


It's buggy, but it's a start. Be patient with it.

Slightly important-ish

Today I heard someone call something "slightly important-ish." You know what's slightly important-ish? The hyphen in important-ish! That is to say, it can hardly be called important at all!

The real reason I'm blogging is because I just had some really great toast. I've had a lot of toast in my day, and I KNOW what good toast tastes like. Taste toasts like. And this was some PARTICULARLY good toast. I call it "Hecka Toast." Here is the recipe:

Hecka Toast
Grandma Sycamore's Sunflower & Honey Enriched Bread
Country Crap Butter-Like Spread

Toast bread. Spread spread. Eat. Blog.

repetitiveness vs. predictability

Things that are repetitive and predictable:
- Techno music
- Crappy sitcoms
- Ok, all sitcoms

Things that are repetitive but not predictable:
- Posts on this blog
- Gunshot sounds from a roommate playing a video game in the other room
- Me oversleeping

Things that are predictable but not repetitive:
- My grades
- The end of the world
- A pencil

Things that are neither repetitive nor predictable:
- Terrorists TP'ing your house
- Just about everything else

Things I do frequently and why

Things I do frequently:
- brush my teeth
- watch SpongeBob
- put on shoes
- type things
- go to class
- sleep
- ask girls on dates
- eat Cheetos

Why:
- Smith's just keeps having sales
- if I don't do it by choice, I'll end up doing it against my will
- I was brainwashed by Sesame Street
- ha! just kidding.
- I'm actually doing it right now!
- it's very uncomfortable not to
- it's a habit I developed back in Tucson
- so I can get a sweet job

If they matched up in order, you wouldn't be reading this particular blog. Something I also do relatively often is discover that all of my perishable food has simultaneously gone bad. On the first sunday of the month.

Oh, and the square root of -1 is called i. It was an alphabet joke. Or math joke. That one doesn't count as T.

Approval

I approve of the following 26 things:

Old-timey names
Comfy chairs
Dinosaur comics
XKCD
White Ninja
Bad driver's license photos
Jack in the Box
This message
Vocabulary
Friday
Appropriateness
Hyphens
Yodeling
Sponge Bob
Zupa's
Going to another city to get a better bargain
U-Hauls
Knowledge
Quarters
Never-ending salad & breadsticks
Parrots
Languages
Mail
The square root of -1
Everclear
Really tall trees

Fries

Hmm.

Attempt #1:

me: You could make political statements like that. Get all up in everyone's fries.
person #1: yeah.
me:

Verdict: Success!


Attempt #2:

(at work, talking about a computer program)
me: It works. You just have to tell it to get all up in everyone's fries.
person #2: (mouth agape)
me: sphhnnxxk.

Verdict: Unsuccess. I snickered. So I left and replayed the moment in my mind a few times. I read T-Rex's statement dozens of times. I was ready.


Attempt #3: (same person!)

me: I lied.
person #2: gasp!
me: It only reconnects when it needs to access it. Then it gets all up in the network's fries.
person #2: okay.
me:

Verdict: Relative success. I ALMOST smirked. And that wasn't technically the right phrase.


Attempt #4:

person #3: I don't think he likes it.
me: Yeah. We're kinda gettin' all up in everyone's fries.
person #3: Sure, but there's nothing we can really do about it.
me:

Verdict: Success! I'm totally getting good at this.

Things and their ratings

I slammed out some sweet history assignments. The one and only thing I remember is that the Chinese used the word "emperor" because "king" wasn't awesome enough. A very long time ago I overheard a guy say "are you kidding? I'm the king of these things!" referring to the making of some doohickey out of leather. He had a very nasal voice and I remember it well. I think of it every time I feel like I'm the king of something, like driving minivans in reverse at work, or eating Fritos. But now being the king of something feels kind of second-rate. I need to be the emperor. History has brutally downplayed all of my abilities. Rating: 1 out of 5.

I drank a soda. It was tasty. Rating: 5 out of 5.

I got a free ticket to the new Harry Potter movie. I've never read any of the books nor seen any of the Harry Potter movies until now. My knowledge of Harry Potter consisted entirely of Potter Puppet Pals. You can understand my slight confusion at some parts, and maybe "Hogwarts" is a place where they teach people how to act really badly, so I should really learn more about the series before I judge this movie. Rating: N/A out of 5.

I just got kicked in the back. It was accidental and I hardly felt it, and it was by Cannon, which is always a pleasure. Rating: 4 out of 5.

Fugonons

I'm sick of fugonons. It's as if people don't even know they're using them. It amazes me that there are people my age that still do things like chew with their mouths open, make fun of people, or use a fugonon when a simple comparison will do.

Here are four additinoal photos, one from each of the events described in the previous post. And I'm in each picture! I guess that would make each photo a sort of visual fugonon.

Things I have recently eaten

I recently ate four things:

1. It was my cousin's birthday on Saturday, so I went to her house in Orem to celebrate. It turns out she likes Indian food, and I helped(watched) my aunt make some chicken tikka masala. Here's a picture I took.
















2. Some friends and I decided to try and make some fondue out of some Starbursts, so we melted down a bunch of pink starbursts and made a Starburst apple as though it were a caramel apple. Here's a picture I took.




















3. I finally got sick of NOT eating any Jack in the Box, so I drove to Pocatello, which is the closest location to my house, and I finally had some. It was worth it. Here's a picture I took.
















4. I drove to Salt Lake, and wandered onto the U of U campus. All of the buildings were locked, but I found a door that had been propped open. I went inside and bought a Twix bar. Here's a picture I took.

















One of the above stories is false.

Things I'd Rather Do Than Study History

To participate in this blog post, find a quarter and flip it when prompted!

Study history? I'd rather shove a (flip now!!)

heads: PENCIL
tails: NONDESCRIPT SURGICAL TOOL

into my (flip now!!)

heads: EYE
tails: ABDOMEN

and give it a(n) (flip!!)

heads: 90 DEGREE TURN
tails: ADDITIONAL THRUST

(flip again!)

heads: FIVE TIMES
tails: SIX TIMES

and I'm (flip!)

heads: NOT KIDDING.
tails: DEAD SERIOUS.

I don't like history. I can't do it.