Category / OT

by Winter Wallaby

[OT] T-Shirts I Don’t Understand

I don’t understand this shirt. At first, I was completely confused, but after some searching, I realized that it was likely a reference to this shirt:

The second shirt is, in turn, a reference to Doppler shifting of light (which, among other things, says that colors shift towards blue if you move towards them quickly enough).

However, this just brings up more stuff I don’t understand:

(1) It doesn’t seem like the blue shirt makes any sense except as a reference to the red shirt. (Or does it?) But is the red shirt so well-known that it makes any sense to wear a shirt that assumes the viewer has seen the red one?

(2) The first shirt says “You don’t need run fast enough.” Is this slang? Or something English speakers might actually say? It doesn’t seem like it is, but I’m baffled by the idea that someone made and sold a T-shirt without proofreading the one sentence on the T-shirt. Yes, I see typos on signs and in newspaper articles all the time, this product only has one sentence, and that one sentence is the focus of the product that they’re trying to sell.

This seems very strange to me. Does this seem perfectly normal to you? Have you seen worse?

by Winter Wallaby

Your call is very important to us [OT]

When I’m on hold, if they play some bland, inoffensive music, I can put my headset on, and ignore it for hours, as I work, read e-mails, etc… A long wait can be a little annoying, but it’s not really a big deal.

If they interrupt the music to tell me “your call is very important to us” I can’t ignore the interruption. Having a person “talking” to me jolts me to attention, and disrupts me from whatever else I’m trying to do. It doesn’t make me feel like my call is important to them; it just makes me more aware of how long I’ve been on hold, and increases my annoyance. And if I’m on hold for 45 minutes, and the music is interrupted every 35 seconds to tell me that my call is very important to them, that shifts from annoying to maddening. (You may begin to guess that these numbers are not arbitrary, but based on a recent experience.)

Anyway, this is not (just) a rant, but a genuine question: What’s the point of interrupting the call like that? Is my reaction atypical? It seems “obvious” that this is annoying, and will not endear the company to me. But almost every company in the world does it (albeit not with 35 second intervals), and it would be easy enough not to, so my guess is that there’s some logic behind it that I’m not seeing.

by Winter Wallaby

Gut yontif

Sentences that I would have never, ever predicted one year ago:

“The sukkah in the front of the synagogue is not kosher, because we can’t give it three walls and still make it drive-through. Please make sure everyone is wearing masks when you go through.”

I’m not Jewish, but my wife and kids are, and that was the message from our synagogue today. Imagine reading that one year ago and trying to make sense of it.

Chag Sameach to anyone who’s celebrating.

by CIDU Bill

CMT: It’s Today [OT]

A final reminder that my son and his girlfriend are riding today to raise money and awareness for Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a rare degenerative neurological disease.

I promised I wouldn’t post the long version of this more than once, so it’s here

Next year, assuming the world returns to semi-normal, I’ll be joining them (though more likely on a walk than a ride). And let’s be honest, it’s more interesting when there’s a separate CIDU tally.

As always, thanks for your support both with CMT this year and with the March of Dimes Walkathon for the first twenty years of the century.

Mary Cate’s fundraising page

by CIDU Bill

CMT: You guys are awesome as always

Since the March of Dimes Walkathon isn’t happening this year (though as Chak reminded me, my 27-year streak isn’t affected if the event doesn’t take place), I was hoping to move our support over to Charcot-Marie-Tooth, a rare degenerative neurological disease with which my son’s girlfriend was. They’re doing a bike ride at the end of this month to raise awareness and money for research.

(I promised I wouldn’t post the long version of this more than once, so it’s here)

Almost immediately, support started coming in from CIDU visitors, and we’re all very grateful.

(Disclaimer: We are not donating money for Mary Cate’s ride: our son is part of the same team, of course, and nobody’s visiting his page: it’s just sitting there like Charlie Brown’s Christmas tree, and it’s really sad)

A couple of people have reported having trouble making donations online. Please let me know if you do, and maybe I can help.

Mary Cate’s fundraising page