Archive for the ‘cell phones’ Tag
I thought I’d start this post with a word I just made up. The secret word is irkism. It’s not a term any of you women have ever heard but its the perfect description of the effect that many of you have on us men.
Have you ever had an argument that sort of takes on a life of its own and turns into a nightmare? Just wondering is all. I think this list I’m about to write will be the post that initiates one of those arguments for me. I sat quietly for years and listened to; men are this and they do that, and women are better and we’re not emotional humps, you get the idea. They’re permitted to say almost anything they please knowing we men aren’t likely to say much in return if we ever hope to have sex again. It’s time for us men to stand up and be counted. Here’s my top-ten list of women’s traits that have irked me for decades. They’re in no particular order of importance and for testicular safety they are not all about my better-half. That disclaimer should keep me safe for a while.
1. Overuse of lotion, perfumes, and any other liquids that will make them soft, smooth, and seemingly younger. It’s a wonder they don’t slip and slide right out of the bed.
2. The wearing of fake eyelashes, nails, and hair extensions. It makes me afraid to grab hold of anything. It might just come off in my hand.
3. Hogging the blankets and pillows. I have four pillows on my bed as well as a sheet and comforter. I often wake up, especially, in the winter and find I have no pillows, one-half the sheet, and about one-third of the comforter.
4. PMS related temper tantrums. There were times when I turned and scampered away to avoid a potential problem. Thank god those days are over for us.
5. Constant over-talking. I guess their rule is that guys must be good listeners at all times but women, not so much. Not very nice.
6. Forcing us to lie to them. Does my ass look too big in this dress? Is this hair color a good fit for me? Don’t you just love these shoes? OMG
7. TV Hogs. If I have to watch or listen to anymore of Dancing With the Stars, American Idol, The Voice, or any and all romantic comedies, just shoot me now!
8. Cell phone courtesy. If we get a phone call they’ll be sure to stand nearby and talk as loud as possible so we have to shout to be heard. Of course when they get a call we’re forced to shut everything down so as not to interrupt. Everyone knows their calls are more important than ours.
9. Trash in my car. Unfortunately I have door pockets in my car. I made the mistake of cleaning out the passenger side pocket a week ago. It was unbelievable. I found hand lotion, sanitizer, face cream, old receipts, gum wrappers, and three packets of hot sauce and ketchup. There were a few other things but I’m too depressed to go on.
10. Coupons. Don’t even get me started on this subject. I’ll say no more than that.
I feel soooooooooo much better now that I’ve gotten all of these gripes off my chest but only until she reads this post.
I AM MAN, HEAR ME ROAR
What are two things that most people think about every day. My best guess would be death and sex. With that thought in mind I decided to supply you all with a list of global statistics about many things but mainly death. Many of these numbers are current up to and including today. Some of the information is shocking and some is simply unbelievable.
Global Death Rate
Statisticians have calculated the "mortality rate" for the world to be roughly .883 percent. This means that 1 out of every 113 people in the world died last year.
World Population:
- has reached 7 billion on October 31, 2011
- is projected to reach 8 billion by 2024
- has doubled in 40 years from 1959 (3 billion) to 1999 (6 billion)
- is currently growing at a rate of around 1.13 % per year
- growth rate reached its peak in the late 1960s, when it was at 2%
- growth rate is currently declining and is projected to continue to decline in the coming years
- average annual population change is currently estimated at over 80 million
- world population will reach 10 billion persons in the year 2056
As of Today
"This year" = from January 1 (00:00) up to now
"Today" = from the beginning of the current day up to now
"net population growth" = births minus deaths
145,641 Births today
60,991 Deaths today
22,888,972 Births this year
9,585,278 Deaths this year
84,650 Net population growth today
13,303,694 Net population growth this year
Technology
37,472,003 Computers produced this year
2,092,893 Cellular phones sold today
$ 74,559,389 Money spent on videogames today
3,316,866,142 Internet users in the world today
82,805,119,987 Emails sent today
229,774,292 Tweets sent today
1,711,619,570 Google searches this year
Health
1,621,694,128 Overweight people in the world people in the world
1,731,966,562 Water consumed this year (million L)
134,660 Deaths caused by water related diseases this year
661,570,850 People with no access to a safe drinking water source
Natural Resources
Quick Facts: Barrel = 42 Gallons = 159 Liters
31,340,762 Oil pumped today (barrels)
1,158,647,387,197 Oil left (barrels)
13,793 Days to the end of oil (~38 years)
Miscellaneous Deaths
1,215,470 Deaths of children under 5 this year
54,974 Deaths of mothers during birth this year
268,816 Deaths caused by HIV/AIDS this year
1,313,313 Deaths caused by cancer this year
156,851 Deaths caused by malaria this year
Alcohol/Drugs/Smoking
5,659,200,051 Cigarettes smoked this year
799,386 Deaths caused by smoking this year
399,945 Deaths caused by alcohol this year
171,477 Suicides this year
215,859 Road traffic accident fatalities this year
$ 63,971,038,394 Money spent on illegal drugs this year
How’s that for a quick and dirty summary of the human race. Chaos, death, destruction, confusion, and life goes just keeps rolling along.
IT’S MUCH MORE FUN TALKING ABOUT SEX
Here’s your first dose of totally useless information (Trivia) for 2016. I can only assume many of you readers will be spending some time this year in your tavern of choice and many of you will attempt to participate in some sort of Trivia challenge or bar bet. Since it’s obvious to me from some of the emails and comments I receive that many of you drink regularly you will probably need these factoids to help you out a little. This information is my New Year’s gift to you so let’s get started with a few items about the Internet.
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The time spent deleting spam emails costs U.S. Businesses approximately $10 billion annually.
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The highest publicly reported amount paid for a domain name is $7.5 million in stock options, to buy business.com.
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Thirty-five billion emails are sent each day throughout the world.
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Thirty-two percent of all singles think they will meet their mate online.
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The first domain name ever registered was Symbolics.com.
Now for a few more interesting facts concerning our new beat friends . . . our cell phones.
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More than fifty percent of the people on the earth have never made or received a telephone call.
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Approximately 1,314 phone calls are misplaced by telecom services every minute.
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There are 150,000,000 cell phones in use in the United States, more than one for every two human beings in the country.
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As much as eighty percent of microwaves from cell phones are said to be absorbed by your head.
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A Belgian couple were married by short message service (SMS) because text messaging played such a big part in their relationship.
Now for what you’ve all been waiting for. A few tidbits of information on our ever so interesting and at times nasty bodily functions.
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The average heart beats 2.5 billion times in a lifetime. The heart beats about 100,000 times each day.
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The body gives off enough heat in thirty minutes to bring a gallon of water to a boil.
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A woman’s heart beats faster than a man’s.
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A pair of human feet contains 250,000 sweat glands. There are about one trillion bacteria on each foot.
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During a kiss, as many as 278 bacteria colonies are exchanged.
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The body loses half a liter of water a day through breathing.
This was just the first of many trivia postings you can expect this year. I think it’s time for this blog to start living up to it’s name. You can’t have too much useless information in your life and I’m here to guarantee that you get yours.
Gardening and other outdoor pursuits have taken a spot much lower on my priorities list today. Yesterday we had a very short thunderstorm (badly needed) but with it came many problems. Some sort of power surge crashed my home network and fried my router. I spent most of yesterday attempting to repair and correct the problems. What a pain in the butt.
My home network is quite comprehensive (when working) and an absolute nightmare when it isn’t. Losing the router shut down our alarm system, the telephone system, the Xbox, the DVD player, the MyCloud, the Internet, and all printing capabilities. It’s times like these that force me to realize just how much our household relies on this damn technology.
After doing a lot of testing I determined the router had truly been destroyed. Since it was rather old replacing it wasn’t that big of a deal. Unfortunately that old router had been attached to the Time Warner modem on the Internet feed which was also badly damaged. It was off to my home-away-from-home, Best Buy, to begin the rebuilding process. I upgraded to a newer model of router and also purchased a network battery backup system. Then I stopped off at Time Warner on the way home and traded in the old modem for a new data modem.
I returned home and installed the new equipment which turned out to be much easier than I anticipated. Good news, right? No effing way. As I began the process of making sure all of our devices were reprogrammed to the new system I found a new problem caused by the upgrade. My “Old Faithful” of a desktop computer refused to connect to the new and improved network. Unfortunately this desktop is four years old and is my main storage device for over five thousand music files and an additional twenty-five thousand photographs. Please, just shoot me now.
The desktop also has my only working copy of Windows Live Writer which is one of the best programs ever created for posting blogs. Microsoft in it’s infinite wisdom has discontinued the product and that puts me in a serious bind. If I can’t resolve the network issues with this computer I’ll be totally and truly screwed. The repair work will continue today and this posting will probably be handled through the WordPress system.
I love computers but OMFG can they be frustrating. Between virus protection, firewalls, hackers, and network requirements, it can make a person crazy. Hopefully I’ll figure things out quickly but as always with computers I expect the worst. I’ll keep you posted ( no pun intended).
Todays posting will be a little more scatter-brained than usual but that’s something you should be used to by now. My life continues in it’s normal routine broken up only by the occasional minor problems, things that need fixing, or just a shot of Jack Daniels when needed. Owning a home is a constant stream of useless tasks that must be dealt with or the whole world will come crumbling down around us (or so says my better-half).
I’ve been spending a fair amount of time for the last few days trying to discover exactly what my brand new cell phone can do. I was forced to return to the bosom of Verizon Wireless after my two months of freedom when I discovered just how truly bad the Tracfone company really is. It sounded like a good idea at the outset but things went down hill fast after I actually tried to use it. Apparently they have half the number of towers that Verizon has which is reflected in their terrible cellular coverage. So I came crawling back to Verizon with my tail between my legs and signed up for a phone that appears to be way smarter than I am.
“Samsung Galaxy S4”
After two days of playing around with it I finally have it setup and ready to go. It’s actually pretty damn cool and has a camera function with 13 megapixels making it comparable to the quality of my Nikon 3200 SLR. The Android operating system also makes it a snap to get the photo’s from the phone to the blog. Android rules (even though I hate Google). Here’s a couple of sample photo’s I took in the garden yesterday.
It’s been a rainy week so far and I’ve had to find something to do to keep me out of trouble. I’ve had two old Sanyo speakers that I bought a million years ago that have long since become obsolete. I kept them around for years with the intention of making them into something useful and this was definitely the week for it. Here’s a series of shots as I progressed through the project. It’s nearing completion but it will be another week or two before I’m completely finished with staining and painting.
It’ll make another fine addition to the décor in my man-cave and will give me a few more storage options for my stupid treasures. I have a second matching speaker sitting somewhere in storage and I guess I’ll keep it until I can come up with a workable idea to repurpose it. That’s a new word I recently picked up from some stupid television show about salvaging old stuff and giving it a new life. It’s a little lame but accurate I suppose.
Yard sales and flea markets are on the agenda for Saturday, weather permitting. I sure hope we find a few things worth dragging home.
everyuselessthing.com 