http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog "A man can stand anything except a succession of ordinary days" -- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Sun, 31 Jan 2010 15:12:20 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en It's sometimes surprising just how narrow the focus of some people can be, when they compare themselves, or a group they identify with, to people who aren't them. People will tend to expect others to see them in a much better light than they would themselves see other people placed in ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2009/03/missing-the-glaring-similarities/ The head of the cleaning company in my office brought in a new worker with him today. While she was cleaning the floor, and emptying the garbage bins, in our manufacturing room I heard her complaining to him "There is a lot of garbage here!". With an obvious tone indicating that ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2009/03/yes-thats-why-youre-here/ Everyone wants to feel good about themselves, and marketers want people to feel good about their products. So it's understandable that people will tend to present things in the most impressive and positive way possible. At some point, though, this can get too much, and too annoying. When you want to ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2009/03/pushing-more-impressive-sounding-names/ It's very easy to be the second-largest anything in the world, when the first largest group is defined as everything that's actually relevant, and you're defined as everything else. A very large forum/bulletin-boards website here in Israel, Tapuz (Hebrew only), recently opened a new forum about Classical Homoeopathy. That by itself is ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2009/02/flat-earth-the-second-largest-geographical-method-in-the-world/ Weird Tales are offering a free PDF copy of their July-August 2008 edition, as a promotion and a way for people to properly sample the magazine without having to gamble on the money to buy it. The subscription price varies dramatically based on whether you are subscribing from within the US, ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/10/canada-is-not-part-of-the-united-states/ The police, both here and in many (most? all?) other countries in the world, provide a short "emergency" phone number. The idea being that it will be easy to remember, work from all phones in all locations, and be fast to dial in case of a real emergency. The police here ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/10/fast-police-response/ Last night I saw two cases of cars stuck by the side of the road, and in both cases the drivers behaved very oddly. Well, the second behaved oddly, the first was just a stupid idiot. Right at the top Let's start with the second case. It involved a single car standing ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/09/strange-people-by-the-side-of-the-road/ It's pretty much a nonsense post, but I found it amusing, so why not bother the rest of humanity with it, right? Last night I passed by the gas station to fill out my car's tank. The price of gasoline here has climbed to exactly 6.66 ILS per liter, which is what ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/09/gasoline-of-the-beast/ Surveys are complex. There is a lot that you can do wrong. Actually, looking at many surveys around, there is a lot that is done wrong. Time after time. Sometime it's the big stuff. Sometimes small. Sometimes the surveys are not done to get answers, but to show what you want the ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/07/this-is-why-you-should-let-someone-experienced-do-surveys-or-well-not/ Some ad companies think they can get better results by targeting the ads to the viewers. Some strategies are matching the ad with the viewed page, while others try to target the audience in different ways, based on location or language. Which makes sense. One problem is finding the country of ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/07/if-you-cant-handle-bidirectional-text-dont-show-bidirectional-text/ After neglecting this blog for too long, I now updated the software (WordPress) to a new version, updated the several plugins it uses, and am also planning to get back to actually using it. In the meantime, if anything seems broken, or just strange, in the way the blog behaves, please ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/07/updates-and-getting-back/ There are a lot of debates about privacy, and about the balance between privacy and research (or possibly privacy and anything else of utility that can be derived from the private information). Of all the areas of privacy, one of those where people object the most to violations of their privacy ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2008/01/there-is-an-expiration-date-on-medical-privacy/ When a group of several people eat together at a restaurant (or bar, coffee shop, etc...) there are common ways to split the bill: One person pays everything. Split evenly. Each pays for their own portion. The exact values are of course a bit fluid on the last two options, since the numbers may ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2007/10/some-basic-math-for-waiters/ From a spam email I received today, after the link to their site: Greeting yaron get rid of that self-esteem once and for all. I think I'll keep my self-esteem, but nice of them to offer. http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2007/09/now-even-random-spammers-believe-i-think-too-highly-of-myself/ A new version of the Firefox browser was released today. A minor update from version 2.0.0.6 to version 2.0.0.7. Even more minor than that, actually, since what came out was just an RC version for testing. Sometime in the past I downloaded an update that was considered a beta or RC, ... http://www.ordinarynothing.org/blog/2007/09/release-notes-should-really-include-the-release-notes/